Wealthy collectors spend millions to acquire dinosaur skeletons: these auctions, one of which is held Thursday, October 21 at Drouot in Paris for a triceratops, sorry conservatives and paleontologists, who helplessly witness the departure of these fossils in private collections. To the detriment of museums.
“The sad thing is that you can’t compete”, deplores paleontologist Francis Duranthon, shortly before the Thursday sale of “Big John”, the largest known triceratops, whose price is estimated between 1.2 and 1.5 million euros.
“For us, that represents about 20 or 25 years of acquisition budget”, explains to AFP the scientist, curator and director of the Toulouse Natural History Museum.
Like many of its counterparts authorized for sale, “Big John” should fall into the hands of a private collector, and potentially escape science and museums, and therefore the general public. In this specific case, however, the frustration felt seems less. “There we don’t care, because triceratops, we have plenty!”, sweeps Pascal Godefroit, paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.
The species is known and “we already have complete skeletons of triceratops”, adds Francis Duranthon. “It’s just that this one is a little bigger.”
“But even if it’s a triceratops, there are always aspects that we know less well”, notes Annelise Folie, curator of the paleontology collections at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. “It may be that some bones are better preserved and may provide new information.”
“No one can say in advance whether or not they have information that they do not have”, abounds Nour-Eddine Jalil, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Paris. “But this is a lesser evil”, he concedes, because the specimen sold to Drouot was analyzed upstream by professional paleontologists. This is far from the case with other dinosaur skeletons on the market: the specimens are often poorly identified due to the lack of appropriate scientific expertise.
“Half of the pieces that are on sale are rubbish!”, annoys Pascal Godefroit. “Too often you have interesting pieces, but which are misidentified or screwed up during the reconstructions, because the bones are mixed with plastic for example.” Unknown or poorly known species can thus pass under the radar. “If it is a new species, the loss is immense, since we will not even be aware that it existed on Earth”, notes Annelise Folie.
Now these fossils “constitute our natural heritage” and “are all clues that tell us about the evolution of the Earth”, insists Steve Brusate, American paleontologist, author of the book Le triomphe et la chute des dinosaures, translated into 21 languages and just published in France.
These auctions also raise the question of public access. “Showing a triceratops in a museum is to ignite vocations in the eyes of children”, testifies the director of the Toulouse Museum. “When I was a teenager, the T-Rex Sue skeleton was exhibited at the Field Museum in Chicago. Seeing it helped make me want to become a paleontologist.”, remembers Steve Brusate, consultant for the film Jurassic World 3 (on screens in 2022). The fate of the scientist could have been quite different if the dinosaur had been enthroned in the living room of a wealthy businessman, he says.
This type of trade has existed since humans found fossils, but the first part of Jurassic Park, in the 1990s sparked a new craze, especially among celebrities. It is currently impossible to force buyers to leave their specimen available to scientists for study. But sometimes we get to “to work in good understanding”, says Pascal Godefroit.
In addition, this trade allows “expose” certain fossils, in the United States in particular: the fact of being able to sell them (under certain conditions) can motivate the realization of excavations in certain countries, recalls Nour-Eddine Jalil.